Johannesburg - Police are investigating whether there is any truth to the claims that about 17 alleged illegal miners are trapped in a disused mineshaft after an explosion underground in Benoni.
A body was found next to shaft 17 on Wednesday morning and a person who claimed to have stumbled upon the corpse told the police that more people were trapped in the shaft.
Gauteng police spokesperson Captain Tsekiso Mofokeng said a man had alerted the SAPS about the body of a man lying outside the shaft.
Mofokeng said officers found the corpse outside the shaft.
“There were wounds on the upper body and we don’t know whether he was beaten or whether rocks from the shaft fell on him. We also don’t know what the cause of death is, and we will hear from the pathologist,” he said.
“The man also said an explosion had happened in that shaft and that there were more people trapped underground.”
Mofokeng said upon receiving that information, more police with sniffer dogs were called to the scene to verify the allegations.
However, the dogs didn’t find anything, he said.
Mofokeng said there were many things that didn’t make sense, including how the man knew about the alleged explosion and how he had managed to escape unharmed while others hadn’t been so lucky.
Another oddity, he said, was how the body ended up outside the shaft.
He said police were questioning the man in an attempt to find more information about the allegations.
The discovery of the bodies of illegal miners in the area is common. In April this year, five bodies were found with gunshot wounds in Benoni. The police questioned the person who alerted them to the bodies to gather more information.
And in February, five hacked bodies were found in Daveyton, Ekurhuleni. They had all been shot.
The men had been assaulted, hacked with sharp weapons and shot multiple times.
Despite their injuries, some of the men had managed to flee from their attackers. But they didn’t get far before they succumbed to their wounds.
When police and paramedics arrived later, they were greeted by the gruesome sight.
Two bodies were lying next to each other on a main road. Both had multiple gunshot wounds, while another had been so badly hacked that part of his skull was missing.
Another body was lying not far from the mineshaft while a fourth was found at Cloverdene informal settlement near the N12. The victim had also been hacked to death.
Both bodies were hidden by overgrown grass. One of the suspected illegal miners was the one who had tipped off the police about the corpses.
The Star